Oct 13, 2025 · 43m · startup-ideas
My AI Videos Hit 1M+ Views (Veo3 + Sora 2 Demo)
PJ Ace · 31m spoken Greg Isenberg · 6m spoken Ad Voice / Character · 24s spoken Ad Voice / Interjection · 1s spoken Video Ad Narrator / Character · 0s spoken
0:00 / 0:00
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this masterclass episode of the Startup Ideas Podcast, host Greg Isenberg and viral creator PJ Ace break down the end-to-end production pipeline, creative frameworks, and agency business models behind multi-million-view AI video commercials.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Greg holds 17.4% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Greg as informed peer 3.0 Guest teaching 5.9 Guest disagreement 0.4 Greg pushing back 0.0
speaking balance: gold is Greg, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 39:02 Calling out OpenAI's launch strategy
PJ casually criticizes OpenAI for using a dirty playbook of removing guardrails to reach top app store ranks before heavily restricting generation.
Hardest push from Greg ▶ 36:26 Ideas remain the true bottleneckGreg reframes PJ's disruption narrative by arguing that tool commoditization means distinct creative ideas become the ultimate competitive advantage.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 28:12 Veo 3 picture-in-picture outpainting tutorialPJ explains an advanced undocumented hack of embedding reference thumbnails into source frames to steer Veo 3's camera reveal.
Greg holds their own ▶ 9:59 Three-pillar virality frameworkGreg distills PJ's ad-hoc brainstorming into three clear structural principles for audience retention: public domain IP, juxtaposition, and meme-native relevance.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Greg as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Greg pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Origin Financial AI Commercial Audio Playback | 2 | 5 | 1 | 0 | PJ breaks down his agency's comedic approach to AI commercials to mitigate consumer backlash. Greg facilitates smoothly, asking how novices can bridge the gap from dabbling in AI video to producing viral commercial results. | |
| Step 1: Scripting, Public Domain IP, and Satirical Tropes | 5 | 5 | 0 | 0 | PJ explains using ChatGPT to brainstorm historical bad financial advice. Greg adds value by synthesizing the workflow into three actionable creative frameworks: public domain IP, juxtaposition, and internet-native hooks. | |
| Step 2: Generating Image Boards and Refining Prompts in Rev | 3 | 6 | 1 | 0 | PJ demonstrates using Rev to generate iterative image variations before animating. Greg validates the shift from direct text-to-video to image-to-video pipelines, noting how foolish direct generation seems in retrospect. | |
| Team Collaboration and Figma Storyboarding | 1 | 6 | 0 | 0 | PJ walks through Figma storyboards for high-budget commercial campaigns, detailing the division of labor between writers, directors, and AI cinematographers. | |
| Step 3: Animating Frames with Veo 3 and Competing Models | 3 | 7 | 0 | 0 | PJ compares video generation models like Veo 3, Kling, and Luma Labs, discussing character dialogue and corporate indemnification. Greg asks about prompt complexity, leading PJ to explain that conversational prompts work just as well as technical camera terms. | |
| Editing, Audio Design, and Outpainting Animation Hacks | 3 | 7 | 0 | 0 | PJ shares specific post-production stacks and reveals an outpainting hack using picture-in-picture image uploads in Veo 3. Greg expresses amazement at the technique's cost-efficiency. | |
| Ramp Commercial Audio: Horror-Themed B2B Spot | 2 | 5 | 0 | 0 | PJ walks through the horror-themed Ramp commercial and shares why they discarded their initial text-to-video draft. Greg and PJ discuss using face enhancers to eliminate uncanny AI perfection. | |
| Sora 2 Disruption, Agency Evolution, and IP Licensing | 5 | 6 | 1 | 0 | PJ and Greg explore how Sora 2 will compress production timelines and create new business models around licensing legacy IP. Greg references recent industry news and frames IP acquisition as an undervalued investment. |
Statements from this episode (15)
PJ Ace scaled an AI video agency to 7 figures in months
“Our entire end to end process that we've used to scale to a six figure, seven figure agency in like a few months.”
Comedy-first ads mitigate consumer backlash against AI-generated commercial videos
“This is the only way we've found to like mitigate a lot of the kind of like AI disruptions, changing everything, customer pushback. And so, like you said, if people are laughing kind of the whole time or they're entertained, one, they're more likely to watch t…”
Effective AI video commercials pair recognizable IP with foreign concepts
“You know, you have to start with like the big idea for the spot. So the big idea for the spot is we like recognizable IP to start so that people have the familiar with the foreign.”
Image-to-video AI workflows are cheaper and faster than direct text-to-video
“We like to work with images on the basis that it's a lot easier and cheaper and faster to generate images for the commercial than it is to do everything text to video.”
Genre AI's David Beckham AI commercial hit 230 million views
“Like this IM-A David Beckham ad that we did that got, like, two hundred thirty million views”
Google Veo 3 is currently the best AI model for talking characters
“VO three is probably the best model at the moment for Making characters talk. It's just really realistic. The motion's great.”
Google excels at foundational AI but struggles to build seamless application layers
“Google's, they have great, always foundational technology, but The real struggle for them, I think, always is this application layer that sits on top, is how do we make it seamless and cohesive”
All-in-one AI generation platforms are significantly more expensive due to API markups
“Now the downside to using an all in one platform for image generation and video generation is they're using API pricing. So it's just going to be a lot more expensive than if you were to go in”
Veo 3 and Sora cannot generate consistent background music across clips
“The reason you wouldn't want VO three or even Sora to like generate a music track is because it's going to generate a new music track for each clip, because it's only Giving you a piece of the pie.”
Creators use picture-in-picture starting frames to direct Veo 3 camera pans
“There's weird hacks like that that you can do where you can put picture in picture to describe what you're wanting to like pan the camera over to, or if it was like a script Like a, if they didn't know what the Titanic looked like, you could put a picture of t…”
Genre AI scrapped its first text-to-video ad due to facial morphing
“Initially we did it all in actually text to video, and we didn't like the look. This is when image to video kind of first came out. So we did the ad in text to video, And it just looked too like AI, like the faces were morphe and it looked like shit. So we act…”
Enhancer.ai allows creators to add realistic skin textures to AI characters
“You can even run a second pass through a program called enhancer.ai where you can even add like acne and details to her face.”
Sora will shrink six-week agency video productions to under one week
“This is very disruptive to us because it essentially makes our six to eight week timeline down to what, like a week or less once you're able to kind of tweak and the quality gets better, which it will over the next three to six months.”
AI will cut animated TV episode production budgets to $30,000
“I think the budgets will get down to, like, to do another, like, He-Man or Thundercats, you could probably do it for, like, 30 grand on the super lowest end between all the roles if you're doing it, like, at scale and at volume.”
Multi-step AI video editing workflows will soon be baked into Sora
“I do think that, like, for everything I laid out, it's important for now, but it's gonna be baked into Sora's kind of suite, where you can edit clips, you can kind of double tap into this, and this entire process is gonna get, like, a lot faster and a lot chea…”